ASROCK 775Dual-880Pro Quick guide

Guide to SATA Hard Disks

Installation and RAID Configuration

1. Guide to SATA Hard Disks Installation ............................ 2

1.1 Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Disks Installation ............... 2

1.2 Making An SATA Driver Diskette ............................... 3

2. Guide to RAID Configurations ......................................... 4

2.1 Introduction of RAID ............................................... 4

2.2 RAID Configuration Precautions ............................ 6

2.3 BIOS Configuration Utility ....................................... 7

2.3.1 Enter BIOS Configuration Utility ................ 7

2.3.2 Create Disk Array ...................................... 8

2.3.3 Delete Disk Array ..................................... 13

2.3.4 Select Boot Array ..................................... 14

3. Installation of Windows 2000 / Windows XP ................ 15

1. Guide to SATA Hard Disks Installation

1.1 Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Disks Installation

This motherboard adopts VIA VT8237 southbridge chipset that

supports Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks. You may install SATA hard

disks on this motherboard for internal storage devices. This

section will guide you to install the SATA hard disks.

STEP 1: Install the SATA hard disks into the drive bays of your

chassis.

STEP 2: Connect the SATA power cable to the SATA hard disk.

STEP 3: Connect one end of the SATA data cable to the

motherboard’s SATA connector.

STEP 4: Connect the other end of the SATA data cable to the

SATA hard disk.

1.2 Making An SATA Driver Diskette

If you want to install Windows 2000 or Windows XP on your

SATA HDDs, you will need to make an SATA driver diskette before

you start the OS installation.

STEP 1: Insert the ASRock Support CD into your optical drive to

boot your system. (Do NOT insert any floppy diskette

into the floppy drive at this moment!)

STEP 2: During POST at the beginning of system boot-up, press

<F11> key, and then a window for boot devices

selection appears. Please select CD-ROM as the boot

device.

STEP 3: When you see the message on the screen, “Do you

want to generate Serial ATA driver diskette [YN]?”,

press <Y>.

STEP 4: Then you will see these messages,

Please insert a diskette into the floppy drive.

WARNING! Formatting the floppy diskette will

lose ALL data in it!

Start to format and copy files [YN]?

Please insert a floppy diskette into the floppy drive, and

press <Y>.

STEP 5: The system will start to format the floppy diskette and

copy SATA drivers into the floppy diskette.

Once you have the SATA driver diskette ready, you may start to

install Windows 2000 / Windows XP on your system directly

without setting the RAID configuration on your system, or you

may start to use “VT8237 SATA RAID BIOS” to set RAID 0 / RAID 1

/ JBOD configuration before you install the OS. You may also set

the RAID configuration by using “VIA RAID Tool” in Windows

environment. Please refer to the document in the Support CD,

“Guide to VIA RAID Tool”, which is located in the folder at the

following path:

.. \ VIA RAID Tool

2. Guide to RAID Configurations

2.1 Introduction of RAID

This motherboard adopts VIA VT8237 south bridge chipset that

integrates RAID controller supporting RAID 0 / RAID 1 / JBOD

function with two independent Serial ATA (SATA) channels. This

section will introduce the basic knowledge of RAID, and the guide

to configure RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD settings.

RAID

The term “RAID” stands for “Redundant Array of Independent

Disks”, which is a method combining two or more hard disk drives

into one logical unit. For optimal performance, please install

identical drives of the same model and capacity when creating a

RAID set.

RAID 0 (Data Striping)

RAID 0 is called data striping that optimizes two identical hard disk

drives to read and write data in parallel, interleaved stacks. It will

improve data access and storage since it will double the data

transfer rate of a single disk alone while the two hard disks

perform the same work as a single drive but at a sustained data

transfer rate.

WARNING!!

Although RAID 0 function can improve the access performance, it

does not provide any fault tolerance. Hot-Plug any HDDs of the

RAID 0 Disk will cause data damage or data loss.

RAID 1 (Data Mirroring)

RAID 1 is called data mirroring that copies and maintains an

identical image of data from one drive to a second drive. It

provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the

entire system since the disk array management software will

direct all applications to the surviving drive as it contains a

complete copy of the data in the other drive if one drive fails.

JBOD (Spanning)

A spanning disk array is equal to the sum of all drives. Spanning

stores data onto a drive until it is full then proceeds to store files

onto the next drive in the array. When any member disk fails, it

will affect the entire array. JBOD is not really a RAID, and it does

not support fault tolerance.

2.2 RAID Configurations Precautions

1. Please use two new drives if you are creating a RAID 0

(striping) array for performance. It is recommended to

use two SATA drives of the same size. If you use two

drives of different sizes, the smaller capacity hard disk

will be the base storage size for each drive. For

example, if one hard disk has an 80GB storage capacity

and the other hard disk has 60GB, the maximum storage

capacity for the 80GB-drive becomes 60GB, and the

total storage capacity for this RAID 0 set is 120GB.

2. You may use two new drives, or use an existing drive

and a new drive to create a RAID 1 (mirroring) array for

data protection (the new drive must be of the same size

or larger than the existing drive). If you use two drives

of different sizes, the smaller capacity hard disk will be

the base storage size. For example, if one hard disk has

an 80GB storage capacity and the other hard disk has

60GB, the maximum storage capacity for the RAID 1 set

is 60GB.

3. Please verify the status of your hard disks before you

set up your new RAID array.

2.3 BIOS Configuration Utility

2.3.1 Enter BIOS Configuration Utility

After the system powers on, the following information will appear on

the screen. Press ‘Tab’ key to enter BIOS configuration utility.

The main interface of BIOS configuration utility is as below:

2.3.2 Create Disk Array

1. Within the main interface, use the up and down arrow

key to highlight the Create Array command and press

<Enter> to call out the list of creation steps.

2. Highlight the Array Mode and press <Enter>, then a list

of array modes will appear. Just highlight the target

array mode that you want to create, and press <Enter>

to confirm the selection.

3. There are two methods to create a disk array. One

method is “Auto Setup”, and another is “Select Disk

Drives”. Select “Auto Setup” to allow BIOS to select

the disk drives and create array automatically. Select

“Select Disk Drives” to let user select the array drives

manually. When using Select Disk Drives method, the

channel column will be activated. Just highlight the target

drives that you want to use and press <Enter> to select

them respectively. When all drives have been selected,

press <Esc> to go back to the creation steps menu.

Create RAID 0

If RAID 0 array is selected in step 2, user can also select a block size

for the array. Use the arrow key to highlight the “Block Size” and

press <Enter>. Then the list of available block size will popup. The

block size can be selected from 4K to 64K Bytes.

Use the arrow key to highlight the Start Create Process and press

<Enter>, then a warning message will appear. Press Yto finish the

creation, or press Nto cancel the creation.

Important note:

The content of the hard drive will be destroyed after array creation.

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